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Centreville baseball seniors Ryan Ashooh and Cam Walter both know what it's like to watch from the dugout.

"It's horrible," Walter said.

"It's terrible," Ashooh added.

Both Ashooh, the Wildcats' ace, and Walter, Centreville's big bat, suffered injuries last year that forced them to miss extended amounts of time. Walter, who quarterbacked the Wildcats' football team in the fall, missed 16 games last season with a torn labrum in his right shoulder. Ashooh, a year-round hurler, played the entire 2009 spring season for the Wildcats, but missed all of the summer and part of the fall with a stress fracture of his L4 vertebrae.

"I have been playing baseball my whole life," said Walter, who watched on the bench as the Wildcats advanced to the Northern Region quarterfinals last year.

"I've never had to sit out a season; that was my first time. It was awesome that we were winning, but it was killing me inside because I couldn't help [the team]."

Walter injured his shoulder during football his junior year. He played seven games last spring, but wasn't effective. With hopes of playing football in college, trying to play through the rest of the baseball season and not have surgery would have not only put his 2010 baseball season in jeopardy, but his senior year of football as well.

"He realized that he wasn't helping us and the only way for him to get healthy for football and to help us this year was to go ahead and have that surgery," Centreville head coach Morgan Spencer said. "He was going to hurt his chances of playing football and not be able to play baseball if he would have waited any longer for that surgery. He was disappointed. He wants to be on the field every inning. For him to have to sit out, it was something that was new to him and something that he really did not like."

After a 2009 football season that saw him complete 118 of 218 passes for seven touchdowns, the 6-foot-4, 215-pound Walter committed to the Virginia Military Institute on a football scholarship. Once healthy and his college career secure, the senior looked forward to one final year of baseball.

Spencer, however, was worried that his first baseman would be focusing on his newly extended football career.

"Part of me wondered how much I was going to get from him," said Spencer.

It didn't take long for the Wildcats' skipper to see that Walter was ready to get back on the diamond.

"After the first week, I could just tell that this kid was ready to play baseball," Spencer said. "More than anything, he wants to win. He is hungry; he wants to win baseball games. That's obviously a sign of a good athlete and a competitive kid."

Walter's numbers don't lie: The senior is hitting .582 with 10 doubles and six home runs. He has 37 RBIs with an on-base percentage of .635 and a slugging percentage of 1.073.

"He is doing some things that are pretty ridiculous," Spencer said.

Unlike Walter, Ashooh finished out his junior season as a first-team all-Northern Region selection. He was 6-1 with a region best 0.53 ERA and 79 strikeouts. The wear and tear on the 6'2" lefty began to slow him down, however, when the summer season started. Ashooh, who verbally committed to the University of Virginia before his junior year, faced a similar dilemma as his teammate -- fight through the injury or get healthy for his senior year. Ashooh, like Walter, chose to get healthy, missing four months during the summer and fall of 2009.

"Anytime I can't play, it's not fun for me," said Ashooh.

His desire to play might be the reason that Ashooh rarely leaves the mound when he gets the opportunity to pitch. The senior has thrown complete-game shutouts in four of his past five games, including a 16 strikeout performance -- a school record -- against Robinson in April.

"He would throw every game if his arm would let him. You can't take him out of the game," Spencer said. "He is that competitive. He wants the ball every time, every night."

Ashooh is 7-2 on the season with a 1.96 ERA. He has 84 strikeouts in 51 innings.

"He just knows how to pitch," said Spencer, a fourth-year head coach who came into the program at the same time as the current crop of seniors. "His work ethic is second-to-none. He works extremely hard. He takes pride in what he does. When he was younger, I don't think he really realized what it was going to take to be good and didn't realize how good he was.

"Over the past two years, you have really seen him take pride in it. He wants to be the best. His whole attitude is different. He wants to earn it every time out."

With Ashooh's arm and Walter's bat, the Wildcats are 12-5. As the season has gone on, Centreville has gotten better, avenging early-season losses against Herndon and Chantilly -- its only two region losses -- with victories over the Hornets and Chargers by a combined score of 17-2. Ashooh earned the victory over the Hornets with a 10-strikeout performance. Against Chantilly, Walter recorded four RBIs with a two-run homer.

With the regular-season finale against Robinson on Friday night, the Wildcats are in position to earn the top seed in the Concorde District tournament.

"This whole group of seniors took some licks when they were sophomores," said Spencer. "Their whole confidence level is impressive. They know that when they step on the field, they have a good opportunity to win. You are starting to see a group of guys that are extremely confident. My job is easy now. We are relaxed."